How it works?

Investing

Investors participate in the project by purchasing ZrCoins, which are a blockchain token option with underlying asset of 1kg Synth. ZrO2 The unique conditions are offered to early investors (to 50%).

Guarantees

Investors can ask for
their funds to be returned at any point after the ICO ends. The project
is fully insured to enable this guarantee.

The project is insured completely to assure guarantees.

Construction

Crowdsourced funds will be used to construct a state-of-the-art green manufacturing facility for the production of Synth. ZrO2 with purity >66%.

Production areas were chosen also

Equipment

The production line will be completed within 6 months of the end of the crowdsale. Investors will be able to inspect the progress of the facility via webcam. Each investor has a possibility of visual control over equipment installation and start-up and commissioning works

Production

Manufacture of Synth. ZrO2 will start no later than 7 months from the end of the crowdsale. The product will ship to buyers immediately.

After commencement of
production, the enterprise begins shipment of a manufactured product to
buyers in conformity with the signed agreements.

Buy back

The enterprise will begin buying back ZrCoins at the market price of 1kg of Synth. ZrO2 in amounts of at least $400,000 per month, no later than 8 months from the end of the crowdsale. Investors also have the option of taking physical delivery of the product. Each investor has the right to choose between the sale of basic asset and the receipt of relevant quantity of Synth. ZrO2

Links:

ZrCoin ICO — timeline and details

The month-long crowdsale will launch on 25 April, seeking to collect a minimum of $3.5 million.

ZrCoin is crowdfunding investment for the construction of a state-of-the-art facility that will manufacture synthetic zirconium dioxide (ZrO2), a key industrial commodity in high demand as a refractory material, especially in the manufacture of ceramics and nuclear reactors. The factory will use an environmentally-friendly process to recover zirconium from industrial wastes rather than extracting it from the earth. The result is not only more ecologically sound, but also more cost-effective and of higher quality than existing forms of zirconium.

Schedule. ZrCoin’s crowdsale will start at 00:01 UTC on 25 April and last for one month, ending at 23:59 UTC on 24 May.

Bonus structure.
ZrCoins will be sold at a discount to the market price of ZrO2, and
will gradually rise in price over the course of the crowdsale. The
discount will start at 50% ($1.40), falling to 44.5% ($1.55) by the end:

Token supply.
The total supply of ZrCoins will depend on the amount of funding
committed at crowdsale. (E.g. if $4 million is raised and all tokens are
bought at $1.40, there will be 2.86 million ZrCoin tokens.)

Platform. ZrCoin will be created as a token on the Waves platform. Distribution to investors will take place following a thorough audit after the crowdsale ends.

Escrow.
All funds will be held in escrow, using two-of-three multi-sig wallets
wherever possible. A list of escrow partners can be found on the ZrCoin website.

Funding targets. ZrCoin
aims to raise a minimum of $3.5 million USD. The crowdsale will be
capped at $7 million, which would give the company enough funding to
build two factories.

ROI.
ZrCoin will start buying back tokens at the market rate for
ZrO2 — approximately $2.80 — around 8 months after the ICO ends. In the
meantime, tokens can be traded on supporting exchanges.

Interview With The Creators Of ZrCoin

The uses of ZrCoin

ZrCoin
is our project’s ICO token, but it will have application beyond the
crowdsale due to its nature as a cutting-edge blockchain financial
instrument.

We
will shortly be holding the ZrCoin crowdsale, in which we hope to raise
at least $3.5 million to fund the creation of a manufacturing plant for
synthetic zirconium dioxide (synth. ZrO2).

Zirconium
is a highly in-demand material used as a refractory — it is very
durable at high temperatures and pressures, which makes it ideal for use
in glass-making and other such applications. Usually, the zirconium
used for firebricks in kilns is extracted from the earth, at a high
financial and environmental cost. These bricks are periodically replaced
because they degrade under the extreme conditions to which they are
subjected. Our process recovers ZrO2 from these industrial wastes, and
the end result is a product that has superior properties and greater
cost benefits than the natural alternative.

Our
research with manufacturers and knowledge of the existing market
suggests that we will be able to sell synth. ZrO2 at a price of $2,800
per tonne. Every ZrCoin sold at ICO will represent an option for 1kg
ZrO2, and so will be redeemed in a later buyback at a price of $2.80.
They will sell at ICO at a discount, starting at $1.40. This is how our
investors will gain ROI.

Industry, investors, traders

There are three main ways in which ZrCoin might be used in the future:

1) As an option on ZrO2.
Because ZrCoin is backed by a real commodity, it is possible to take
physical possession of the ZrO2. We expect a number of businesses to do
just this. Manufacturers who need zirconium for their factories will buy
ZrCoin ahead of time, at a discount — allowing them to acquire
zirconium at below market prices. This will prove an attractive choice
for forward-thinking businesses who have the money to invest in their
future.

2) As an investment in its own right.
As a blockchain-based option, ZrCoin will be treated as an investment
or speculative instrument by traders. Those who invest at ICO can expect
a healthy ROI. Because ZrCoin will trade on secondary markets after the
crowdsale, other investors will have access to it and may be able to
pick some up at an attractive price. Due to the discount offered and the
market price of ZrO2, it is likely that ZrCoin will trade between $1.40
and $2.80. However, the cryptocurrency markets are notoriously
volatile, and how the coin is priced in each currency will depend on its
trading pairs and the performance of those currencies against fiat
(most notably BTC).

3) As a store of value.
Lastly, ZrCoin is backed by a real commodity, and has a theoretical
real-world value of $2.80 (depending on market conditions). It should
therefore have a relatively stable price, particularly over the longer
term. ZrCoin will be a way to hedge against inflation and for traders to
use to park value when trading more volatile coins, such as BTC and
alts.

The ZrCoin crowdsale will be held in the coming weeks. To register for updates or to find out more, visit www.ZrCoin.io.

ZrCoin Bounty Program

You should
register and connect your social media pages to this service. Then you
should make some tasks as to make retweet, “like” page on facebook or
subscribe Youtube channel. For this activities you earn ZrCoin tokens.

Support our project in social media networks earning ZrCoins.

2. Bounty for Translations and moderation of threads on local boards of bitcointalk.org
Translation of topic — 15 ZrCoin with 1 update per week as moderation.

- German

- Korean

- French

- Spanish

- Italian

- Japanese

- Thai

3. Bitcointalk.org Signature and Avatar campaign — 0,7% of ICO result

Signature campaign rules
Participants
need to keep the signature until the end of ICO. Duration of ICO is not
more than 30 days. Start — beginning of April. Any attempt at cheating
will be punished with disqualification from the campaign.

You
can not advertise any other websites/threads in your signature! Any
user with negative trust will not be allowed to participate.Only good
quality posts and that are relevant to the thread will be counted. If we
find spam posts you’re making, you will be removed from the campaign
and receive no payment.Every participant needs to make at least 30
quality posts during Bounty campaign on BCT to be eligible for the
bounty.

Junior Member 1stake

Member 2 stake

Full Member 3 stake

Sr Member 4 stakes

Hero\Legendary 5 stakes

Stakes are added weekly. Only full weeks are in count towards the bounty calculation.

Avatar campaign
Avatar
Campaign is for members who has Full Member rank and higher. And it
gives 1 Stake per week. Put BB-code into your signature and don’t change
it until the end of ICO. The whole bounty pool will be divided among
the participants proportionally to the amount of their stakes.

ZrCoin crowdsale: new dates announced

Due
to new developments we have postponed our crowdsale for three weeks.
Our ICO will now start on 11 May and last for one month.

It’s
been a busy time for the ZrCoin team as we’ve prepared for our
crowdsale. Whilst technically everything is now in place, there have
been developments in the wider ZrCoin ecosystem that have made it
necessary to delay the ICO. Fortunately, the reasons for this are good:
we have new opportunities in the Chinese market, and want to ensure we
fully leverage these.

We
will be opening a new office in China in the coming weeks. As most
readers will already know, China is a major global manufacturer, and
demand for zirconium is high. Just as importantly, there is a strong
cryptocurrency scene in China — a large amount of bitcoin mining occurs
there, as well as a substantial amount of trading (albeit less than
believed a few months ago, before the People’s Bank of China imposed
controls on exchanges). The Chinese are also enthusiastic and creative
investors and are always looking for promising new projects.

As
a result of these developments, we’re holding off on our crowdsale for
another three weeks so that we can make sure we can take full advantage
of the new opportunities it offers. We believe that we can attract a
significant amount of capital from Chinese investors, and simply cannot
pass up the chance to do so if we want our groundbreaking initiative to
be a success.

The crowdsale will now begin on 11 May and last for 30 days, ending on 9 June.

A note about ZrCoin’s ROI

ZrCoin offers ‘only’ 100% ROI. For some, this seems too good to be true. For others, it’s not enough. What’s the reality?

Every
investor knows there is a balance between risk and reward. This
principle is basic to all investment, and those who do not grasp this
can better be described as ‘speculators’ or — more
accurately — ‘gamblers’. It’s not a point of ideology; risk and return
is about simple maths.

Risk and return 101

The risk/return principle applies to all
investments, from the safest of assets through to the riskiest
speculative plays. High-risk investments have to offer a high reward in
order to make them attractive; if they do not, investors will naturally
opt for alternatives that have the highest rewards for the same
risk — or the lowest risk for the same rewards. In the overall
marketplace of investment opportunities, this is bound to happen. (The
real opportunities lie where there are misconceptions about risk, or
reward. These asymmetries of information between investors who do their
homework and those who do not can be highly worthwhile.)

And so
it is that the safest possible opportunities offer the lowest returns.
Government bonds are generally accepted to be super-safe, at least for
major governments. As we’ve seen in recent months, bond yields are
ultra-low; institutional investors are flocking to the safest of havens
to preserve capital. Some yields have even gone negative, which is
remarkable: investors are paying to hold these bonds. That reflects the
fact there is little else so safe on the market. Central bank interest
rates are also at rock bottom, generally around zero to one percent and
even sub-zero in some countries. Retail banks similarly feature very low
interest rates at present, typically a fraction of a percent. But
these, too, are considered super-safe. All funds are insured. It’s low,
low risk, but very low return. The maths stacks up.

Blue-chip
stocks are higher risk, but the returns are greater — generally around 8
percent in the long term, after inflation. But that’s the long term,
over a period of 5–10 years, and on a day-to-day and month-to-month
basis, values can fluctuate significantly. That is also factored into
the price.

Crypto,
of course, is one of the riskiest investments out there. But the
rewards can also be very high. Again, it’s just maths. Some people have
been very badly burned, speculating on bitcoin — those who bought at the
high of over $1,200 back in November 2013 would have seen their
investment sink to around 15% of its dollar value before recovering — if
they held it that long. The reality is that most would have sold and
booked a heavy loss.

ICOs,
too, are risky. Some collect hundreds of thousands and even millions of
dollars — but for what? Some of these projects are extremely promising.
Others are ill-conceived, or vapour, if not outright scams. Countless
people have been burned after participating in an ICO that turned out to
be run by someone who could not come up with the goods. Things are
getting more professional and transparent now, but the rewards are
decreasing with the risks. Anyone who was around for 2014’s ICOs will
know that. You can’t assume anything will immediately go 3x or 10x with
listing on an exchange nowadays.

A
handful of ICO projects do extremely well. Ethereum is one. Having
raised 30,000 BTC (then around $15 million) in its crowdsale, it hit a
market cap of around $5 billion — a remarkable ROI. However, it was
never a dead cert. There were concerns and scepticism from an early
stage, about both the viability of the technology and the health of the
company behind it. They proved unfounded, in the end, but the risk was
surely there. Those who held through everything gained their 300x ROI
because they took on that risk. They could have lost everything, but
they reaped the rewards of their foresight or confidence.

Part II: ZrCoin risk and return

This
is the context within which ZrCoin’s crowdsale must be seen: one of
risk and return. ZrCoin will sell options for 1kg of zirconium dioxide
from $1.40 each, buying them back once production has started at market
rates (around $2.80). That’s an ROI of up to 100%.

Within
the world of conventional investing, a 100% increase in value over the
course of a year or 18 months is impossibly high. We have had people
suggesting we are a scam because they say no ordinary investment can
deliver this. In a world of zero and sub-zero interest rates, and 5–10%
long-term returns on stocks, this is understandable. But for the crypto
crowd, who are used to 300% or 1,000% returns on ICOs, it’s low — we’ve
had complaints that people could make more elsewhere.

This might be true in some instances, but it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of risk and return. Crypto investors might
make more elsewhere, but the higher returns come with higher risks that
they will receive back less than they invested, or nothing at all.
There is no certainty here or in any form of investment.

Real-world blockchain investment

ZrCoin’s
‘modest’ 100% ROI projection reflects the mathematical realities of
investment risk and return. To some investors, it will seem too good to
be true. To others, it appears limited. The difference is a matter of
risk appetite.

Crypto investors are used to huge returns — and huge risks. Those who invested in bitcoin in its early days could not have known
it would succeed; there are any number of reasons it might have failed,
almost did, and still might. It’s a new and emerging technology, after
all. Most mainstream investors, however, do not expect these
returns — and they have a much
lower tolerance for risk. It’s simply unacceptable to most investors to
stand a chance of losing 50% or even all of your capital. (Imagine the
news headlines if a pension fund took this kind of write down.)

Moreover,
blockchain technology is now hitting the mainstream. This is where the
mismatch in expectations probably lies. Blockchain technology used to be
a crypto-only phenomenon: the only blockchain projects were crypto
coins of one kind or another, that were launched primarily to the crypto
crowd, even if they did have an eye on mass adoption (most of them
unrealistically). But blockchain is more than this. It’s a toolkit that
can be applied to so many more situations and ventures. That is what
ZrCoin is doing.

Instead
of creating a crypto-only and online-only application, we are using
blockchain technology to raise funds for a real-world manufacturing use
case. The risk here is not the use of blockchain technology, or the
adoption of a crypto coin per se. It’s simply the — much lower — risks
around the deployment of a new kind of manufacturing technology. It’s a
real-world, relatively low-risk project that happens to use the
blockchain as a crowdfunding mechanism. Understanding ZrCoin through the
same risk-return lens as a crypto ICO is a fundamental category error.

Our
manufacturing partners recognise the value of our process and product,
even if the blockchain is a new way of doing things for them. The crypto
world does not necessarily understand our green zirconium process, but
does grasp the power of blockchain. We are one of a small but
rapidly-growing number of projects that spans the gap between the crypto
world and the physical industrial world. Once there are more of them,
the real and crypto worlds will start to overlap more too.

For more information, visit www.ZrCoin.io. Our crowdsale starts on 11 May and will last for 30 days.

ZRCOIN ICO STARTS IN 9 HOURS

The ZrCoin crowdsale [www.ZrCoin.io] will start at 00:01 UTC on Thursday 11 May 2017 and will last for 30 days, until 23:59 UTC on Friday 9 June.

ZrCoin
is crowdfunding investment for the construction of a state-of-the-art
facility that will manufacture synthetic zirconium dioxide (ZrO2), a
highly in-demand industrial commodity, using a new
environmentally-friendly process.

The
project will sell blockchain-based options (ZrCoin), each of which is
backed by 1kg of zirconium, starting at $1.40 each. After production and
shipping begins, options will be bought back at the market price
(currently $2.80). As a token on the Waves platform, ZrCoins can be
freely transferred and traded at any time.

ZrCoin — $1.8 million and counting!

A
week into our crowdsale we’re closing in on the $2 million mark. We
also wanted to give investors more details about how the swap for
company shares will work.

ZrCoin
got off to a great start and, at the time of writing, almost 1,300
investors have backed our project to the tune of over $1.8 million in
total. We’re over halfway now, and are keen to keep up momentum to reach
our target. If you’ve wondered about investing but haven’t yet taken
the final step, please do get in touch via our Slack and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

It’s
also worth noting that, with BTC and many alts at historic highs,
there’s the opportunity to get into a project that will not only
preserve value by design, but that also offers a solid ROI. Your funds
are accounted at dollar-equivalent prices at the time of deposit, so
investing in ZrCoin is a good way to book some crypto profits and hedge
your portfolio.

Company shares

One
of the questions we’ve been asked a number of times is how the future
swap of ZrCoin tokens for company shares will operate. We’d like to say a
little more about this now.

There
is, of course, no onus on investors to swap their ZrCoin for shares. As
a blockchain token, ZrCoin can be held, transferred and traded freely
on Waves. We imagine that many investors from the crypto world will do
just that, opting to sell their tokens during one of the coming buybacks
that will ensure they see ROI. At this point, having sold their tokens,
they will have exited their investment (at profit) and can use the
funds for whatever they want.

However,
we wanted to offer our investors more than this. We appreciate the
opportunity you are giving us to launch a totally new and
environmentally-friendly manufacturing process. So, for those crowdsale
investors who are interested and who are willing to go through the
necessary identity verification processes, we are making available
shares in our company. 49% of the company will be available to swap for
ZrCoins, via the Cyprus Foundation that is dealing with our finances.
The percentage of our company that is ultimately owned by our crowdsale
investors will depend on how many decide to redeem their ZrCoin for
shares, rather than sell them in the buybacks.

In
due course, when we know more about our funding, we’ll publish exact
figures. But we hope you will see that this offers an attractive
opportunity to ‘roll over’ your investment in ZrCoin, giving you the
chance to own a piece of a unique revenue-generating company that will,
we believe, be at the forefront of a green manufacturing revolution.

Thank you once again for your support!

For more information or to register for the crowdsale, please visit www.ZrCoin.io.

ZrCoin hits $3.5 million target!

We
made it! A very generous investment of WAVES has pushed us over the
line, meaning that our first production facility is now viable. We’re
now looking ahead with confidence and hoping to collect enough funds for
a second facility by the end of the crowdsale.

When
things happen in the cryptocurrency world, they can happen fast.
Yesterday, we passed the $2 million mark — a great milestone to reach,
but still $1.5 million away from our minimum target.

Overnight,
a large investment came in, equal to around $1.8 million. This single
big WAVES investor more than made up the difference, with the result
that our project is now viable! Whatever else comes in, we know that we
now have the resources to make ZrCoin a success.

This
is a strong position for us to be in with another two weeks left to go
in our crowdsale. We hope and expect to see further investment before it
closes on 9 June. For now, though, we want to say a big ‘thank you’ to
all our investors. Due to your generosity, the future of zirconium
production will never be the same again!

The future of ZrCoin

Many
investors estimate the growth potential of ZrCoin at a rate of 5.5% per
month, and believe that the limit of its growth is fixed at $2.80. This
is a major misunderstanding.

George Danelia, one of the escrows ZrCoin ICO

5.5%
per month is the payment that the company can freely make from the
current forecast revenues from the factory. It is the guaranteed profit
calculated on short-term investments. However, if we consider ZrCoin in the medium-term, i.e. for 1–3 years, then its growth potential can exceed even the most optimistic expectations.

The
main driver of ZrCoin’s growth in value will be the exchange of the
token for company shares. Since the acquisition of shares occurs only through a direct exchange of ZrCoin coins, company shares cannot be bought for money.

When will the exchange of ZrCoin tokens for company shares occur?

The
exchange of ZrCoin for company shares will be performed at the most
favourable time for investors — about a year after the start of factory
construction, after the delivery of financial statements and an
evaluation of the company, and before the closure of debt obligations to
investors. Thus, investors will see the financial success of the plant,
and its cost will be highly attractive based on its obligations at the
time.

After the swap for shares, the company can pay off all obligations to investors by selling shares,
as has happened in the case of Bitfinex, for example. This will allow
the project to work 100% for the shareholders — in other words, you!

Further perspectives on ZrCoin

Considering
the company’s predicted financial indicators, its capitalization can
increase twice over during the first year and six times over during the
second year, without any additional conditions. ZrCoin developers are
planning to scale up the technology and then introduce it worldwide.
With such a promising business model, there is no doubt that investors
will be interested in opening new factories in various locations around
the world.

The
proceeds from the construction of new factories and royalties for the
use of the technology can multiply the incomes of production alone many
times over. In this case, a hundredfold increase or more in market cap
over 3–5 years is quite possible.

Many
high-tech giants have grown from small companies. Therefore, when
investing in ZrCoin at this early stage, you have to evaluate the growth
prospects of the company, not just the token: the price of the token
when exchanged for shares may increase many, many times over.

George Danelia, one of the escrows ZrCoin project, a
financial expert, ex-Vice President in Singapore Department of Morgan
Stanley, with 12 years of experience in the field of trading and asset
management.

ZrCoin in Russian Forbes

Our company was recently featured in Russian Forbes! You can read a translation here, or take a look at the summary below.

Conventional
crowdfunding is increasing in popularity, but it still has relatively
few serious use cases. Pebble is one of the exceptions — a campaign that
captured public attention and collected a record $10 million on
Kickstarter. At the present time, many ideas are still frivolous,
humorous or somewhat shady enterprises that reward the investor with a
product that is either late, rough around the edges or entirely absent,
much like the entrepreneur who solicited funding in the first place.

Enter
bitcoin and the blockchain — a technology that, like crowdfunding, has
been associated with its fair share of scams and burned investors. But
both bitcoin and blockchain have grown up, gained respectability and are
entering the mainstream. The democratising impact that bitcoin offered
for financial transfers is now being applied to crowdfunding, with the
result that ordinary people have the chance to break down the barriers
to accessing investment capital. Innovation and, in this instance,
industrial production, are no longer the preserve of large corporations.

Such
an opportunity arose through a meeting between two men: one a
blockchain expert, the other a scientist who had helped develop a new
environmentally-friendly process for manufacturing zirconium dioxide.
The idea was solid, but the bottom line is till the bottom line. As
fictional conman Ostap Bender’s famous quote goes, ‘Money in the
morning, chairs in the evening.’ In other words: payment in advance, or
no dice. The project needed investment, and accepting traditional
venture capital would have involved giving up control of his business.
Banks would have demanded impossible amounts of collateral. Blockchain,
though, held out an intriguing and promising alternative.

And
so was launched the ZrCoin ICO, or ‘initial coin offering’: a
blockchain-based crowdfund that was able to access investors all over
the world with minimal effort and friction, since it operated outside of
the legacy banking system with its barriers and costs of transferring
money. Crowdfunding the minimum of $3.5 million in bitcoins and other
blockchain-based currencies turned out to be a matter of little more
than days, and the total is still rising.

This
money will be used to build a processing plant and launch the
production of so-called synthetic zirconium, with a projected revenue
stream of 70 million roubles per month. These funds will be used to
purchase the blockchain tokens distributed to investors at the
crowdfund, buying them back at a premium of up to 100%. If investors
don’t want to wait until production starts, around 8 months after the
crowdfund closes, they can sell their ZrCoins to other buyers on the
open market. There is also the option to convert them to equity in the
company at a later date, with the prospect of a much higher ROI.

ZrCoin isn’t the first Russian business to take this approach — ChronoBank and Kolionovo
are two recent examples of successful blockchain crowdfunds. But it is
the first to create a real-world manufacturing business from scratch on
the back of an ICO. It does more than set a precedent: it blazes a
trail. The success of ZrCoin will prove to have far greater significance
than for the zirconium industry alone.

ZrCoin crowdsale ends at $7 million

A
huge thank you to all our supporters over the past month. We have the
funding to ensure the ZrCoin project will go ahead and are very excited
about what the future holds.

The
ZrCoin crowdsale has ended, and we’re pleased to report that thanks to
the generosity of our investors we have collected $7 million for our
project.

These
funds will be used to build the first production facility for synthetic
zirconium dioxide, allowing us to pioneer a totally new industrial
product as well as a new financial one, in the form of a
blockchain-based commodities option!

It
was a challenging climate in which to raise funds, though we were
helped as much as hindered by the strong bull market that has affected
bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency markets in recent weeks. In
addition to cryptocurrencies, we received over $800,000 in fiat
relatively early in the crowdsale, giving us a strong foundation to
build on. The star performer was WAVES, though, which has appreciated
from less than $1 a month ago to more than $5 now. WAVES accounts for
around $3.5 million of our total investment at this point.

Overall,
the campaign was a great success. We’re now looking forward to getting
down to work, building the plant (our progress will be broadcast live
via webcam), and ultimately starting production and shipping. At that
point, we’ll start making buybacks from the market.

The
immediate next step for investors is token distribution, which we will
carry out shortly, after we have conducted an audit of all funds
collected. Whilst it will probably be 8–9 months before buybacks begin,
in the meantime, our investors will be able to transfer and trade their
tokens freely on the Waves network. And remember, the buybacks are only
one way to see a return on your investment. Down the line, it will be
possible to exchange your ZrCoin tokens for shares in our
company — something we believe will be a very worthwhile investment to
make.

Many thanks once again and congratulations on becoming a part of a new economic and industrial movement!

ZrCoin Startup Raises Over 7 Million USD from 4,000 Investors at ICO to Create Zirconium Production Facility

ZrCoin,
a research and production startup, has raised $7.07 million in
cryptocurrency from 3,955 investors during their crowdfunding campaign.
The campaign was based on an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), a new
technology for investing in projects using the blockchain.

The
funds collected allow the launch of two synthetic zirconium production
lines with a total capacity of 800 tons per month. The primary goal of
the campaign, which took place from 11 May to 9 June, was the collection
of at least $3.5 million for the construction of the first production
line, with a capacity of 400 tons per month. High demand from investors
led to additional financing, and the opportunity to increase production
capacity.

Investors will receive ZrCoin tokens, which are hosted on the Waves blockchain platform and which can be transferred and traded on crypto exchanges. Each token is backed by 1kg of zirconium dioxide (ZrO2).

‘The
volume of the funds raised was twice as high as we planned. This is a
huge success for the first ICO of its kind on the market. Using
blockchain technology, we secured financing quickly and efficiently. Our
team thanks our investors and partners’, commented Andrey Nikonorov, co-founder of ZrCoin.

‘According
to my estimates, the amount of funds raised by ICOs in 2017 will exceed
$1 billion. More and more companies and startups are choosing this way
of securing investment. Transparency and reliability of blockchain
technology, and the wide possibilities of open information systems, lead
to the creation of fundamentally new solutions that make easier the
life for businesses and private users’, added Sasha Ivanov, founder of the Waves Platform.

‘Using
a bespoke marketing strategy and effective communication with the
online community, whose engagement is exceptionally high in such
crowdfunding campaigns, we and the ZrCoin have established trust with
our audience to create the first ever manufacturing application project
in the cryptocurrency market. We encountered initial skepticism from
some parts of the community, but investors’ interest was obvious — which
the results of the campaign confirmed. I’m confident that the potential
of the ICO as an effective fundraising tool for projects across all
sectors of the economy will be made clear in the coming years,’
explained Vitaliy Tsygulev,
General Director of the Digital Finance Agency, which implemented a
comprehensive marketing and communication strategy for the crowdfunding
campaign.

After
starting production, the distributed tokens will be redeemed from
investors at the market price of the final product. ZrCoin was sold at
ICO at a starting price of $1.40, gradually increasing to $1.55 by the
end of the crowdsale. Since the market price of zirconium dioxide is
$2.80 per 1 kg, this provides a significant opportunity for investors
who purchased it in the early stages. Investors can choose whether to
sell their ZrCoin back to the company or on the open market, or to take
physical possession of the zirconium that backs the token.

Investors
were able to deposit using various currencies, including bitcoin,
Litecoin, Waves and Ethereum. The breakdown of funds raised is as
follows:

The
ZrCoin project combines advanced technologies in the field of finance
with environmentally-friendly industrial production of one of the most
popular and in-demand fire-proof materials in the world — synthetic
zirconium dioxide (ZrO2). The outstanding feature of the project is the
synthesis of this product from industrial wastes.

The
project team invested around $1 million of its own funds in the
development of the technology for the production of synthetic zirconium
from wastes from the metallurgical industry. The first plant will be
located in Magnitogorsk in the Chelyabinsk Region. Completion of
construction and the launch of the first production line are scheduled
for the spring of 2018.